All posts tagged Payments

Google struck a deal with three big U.S. wireless carriers to bolster its Wallet mobile-payment service.

As part of the deal, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile USA will pre-install the Wallet app on Android phones sold in the U.S. beginning later this year. And Google will acquire “technology and intellectual property” from Softcard, a payments service started by the three carriers, to help improve Wallet. Read More »

Google is in talks to acquire mobile-payments company Softcard in a deal that would pair the Internet giant with the largest U.S. wireless carriers to battle Apple Inc. and its new Apple Pay service, according to people familiar with the matter.

Softcard, owned by AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile USA, laid off more than 60 employees last week and remaining staff were told to stop working while the business sought a buyer, two of the people said.

Google recently entered exclusive negotiations with Softcard by offering to buy the business for at least $50 million, one of those people said. PayPal, the payments business that eBay plans to spin off this year, also expressed interest in Softcard, two of the people said. They said Softcard’s telecom-company owners prefer Google because they all distribute phones that use Google’s Android mobile-operating system. Read More »

Starbucks and Square, one-time partners in mobile payments, are going their separate ways in the ongoing battle for how to order and pay for items using smartphones.

Square’s Wallet app stopped working at Starbucks last week, ahead of Square’s plan to stop supporting the app early next year. In an email to users last week, Square said it is discontinuing Wallet to transition to Square Order, a new app to let consumers place orders in advance of showing up at stores.

Starbucks won’t accept payments from the new Square app because it is testing its own app to allow users to pre-order drinks before arriving in shops, building on its loyalty program and its own successful mobile-payment app. Read More »

Nearly two months since its introduction, Apple Pay’s reach is growing.

Apple said Tuesday 10 additional banks now support Apple Pay, including TD Bank North America, Commerce Bank, BB&T and Associated Bank. In all, banks supporting Apple’s mobile-payment service represent about 90% of all U.S. credit-card purchase volume, an increase from 83% at launch, according to the company. Read More »

Poynt, the startup run by former Google and PayPal executive Osama Bedier, said it signed two of the largest payment processors to distribute its new payments terminal to small retailers, restaurants and other businesses.

Chase Paymentech, a unit of J.P. Morgan Chase, and Vantiv, part-owned by Fifth Third Bancorp, set up card-swiping terminals and process card payments at more than 800,000 U.S. merchant locations with about $1 trillion of annual payments.

The two companies are joining as founding partners of Poynt’s payments platform for small merchants, which will also work with new forms of mobile payment such as Apple’s Apple Pay service. Read More »

In the coming year, Americans will ditch their old magnetic-stripe credit and debit cards for new plastic embedded with chip-and-pin technology. To Osama Bedier, former head of Google’s Wallet mobile payment business, the shift is a once-in-a-lifetime opening. “This is the biggest opportunity in the payment business for decades,” he says.

On Wednesday, Bedier launched a startup called Poynt Co. and unveiled the company’s first product, a merchant terminal that reads chip-and-pin cards. The unit can handle other payment technologies that have flooded the market in recent years, including Near Field Communication, QR codes, beacons and Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay. Read More »

People eager to turn their phones into wallets have found that it can cost more to be an early adopter.

Some Bank of America credit- and debit-card users have been charged twice for the same purchase when they use Apple Pay, Apple’s new mobile-payment system that debuted Monday.

The bank says about 1,000 transactions have been affected, and it is reversing the duplicate charges. “We apologize for the inconvenience and are correcting this immediately,” said Bank of America spokeswoman Tara Burke. Read More »